


There Are Some Things Money Can't Buy

by thealphagate_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, First Time, M/M, Missing Scene, challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-17
Updated: 2007-01-17
Packaged: 2019-02-02 19:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12732540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphagate_archivist/pseuds/thealphagate_archivist
Summary: An Episode Tag for "Fire and Water" written in response to another list's challenge. Told from Jack's point of view over Daniel missing. A bit of angst. A little humor. Classic Jack and Daniel (I hope!).





	There Are Some Things Money Can't Buy

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

  
Author's notes: I've rated it "Teen" for a few swear words. Jack does have a bit of a mouth on him!  


* * *

I'm staring down at the piece of paper in my hand. I should be angry. No, let me get this straight...I'm trying to be honest with my feelings. I've promised him. I should be **PISSED**. It was a waste of time, resources, and effort.

And yet, the anger is muted. Like bubbles floating upwards through water, each piece seems separate, slower to come to the surface, and not as potent as it normally is. The imagery isn't comfortable. So I push it out of my mind and tiredly toss the paper on the kitchen table.

I remember the anger from five days ago, so different from the pale reflection I'm elusively chasing in my mind right now. Then, it was sharp, hot, consuming. **THAT** was pissed. That was righteous indignation at something that was wrong on so many levels that most of my levels started to shut down.

First came survival. Being responsible for the rest of the team allowed my feelings to tune out. My mind and body concentrated on one thing only— to escape the fire and devastation around us. I would not fail the rest of them. Not like I failed him. 

Then came shock. The numbness was kind of nice actually. It let me force myself to see a truth I knew, yet still didn't want to accept—I was never going to see him again. My mind knew that and accepted it, but the knowledge didn't touch any other part of me. It was cocooned in filaments of gentle denial, silvered by grief held at bay.

Then came reality, a reality I didn't want anything to do with. And I shut down my guilt. I barricaded my soul against what he made me feel—my feelings for him. He was a teammate and friend, someone who's life had touched my own on levels that were burned out by the fire that consumed him. And I made a pretty little speech. To a room full of people whose lives would be less without him, but who really didn't know what they'd truly lost. But I knew. And that knowledge consumed everything else.

Then came denial. I'm a good host. I can throw a decent party. I can subsume my feelings and act like nothing is wrong. I've been "the good little soldier" for years now. It starts as a facade, of course. We all admit it when we go into that non-thinking, emotionless mode of "Yes, sir," "No, sir," and "It would be my pleasure, sir," no matter how far from the truth any of those statements might be. But when something happens like this, the facade is the only shell holding the crumbled bits of us together. And even as I was denying the events that led up to a houseful of guests, spouting Daniel stories like they were merely the latest episode of this year's "must see" tv show, I couldn't deny that my shell was cracking.

Then came accusatory rage. Anger at myself, at the situation, even at Daniel. Especially at Daniel. For leaving us. For leaving me. For having the nerve to drag me back into the shell I was after my son died. And then pissing on my life by dying himself, relegating me back to a shell existence. A shell that was breaking, shattering like glass. And then glass _was_ breaking. And the pressure inside me, crumbling and churning against the shell, was silenced, briefly. 

Then came disbelief. It had to be a mistake. Daniel wasn't dead. He was going to walk through that door any moment. Every gate activation jump-started my heart, setting it thumping painfully against my fragile shell, widening the cracks. Anger and confusion let me patch the cracks, let me get by until we figured out that our memories lied. We were wrong. We'd left him behind.

And then the anger evaporated beneath the smouldering fire of my determination. We - **I** \- would get him back if it was the last thing I did. My shell was hardening, thickening. It would happen. Failure this time was not an option.

That first moment on the beach, seeing that blue hulking, net-hung fish-creep rising from the waters, brought all my anger right back to the surface. If I didn't need Big Blue to help me find Daniel, I'd have pumped him full of so many bullets, his netting would have looked whole in comparison to what I would have left of him.

And then none of it mattered. Daniel was rising out of the water moments behind El Fisho, waving his arms and telling us not to shoot. Only Daniel. I could tell he was exhausted. He even admitted he was hungry with a half-disgusted look on his face that answered my "What, you didn't eat?" question casually thrown out to him on auto-pilot as I examined the rest of him. Wet, hungry, tired, but that looked to be about it. There was some wildness to his eyes, which I found out later could be ascribed to the torture machine that Fish Face had hooked Danny up to. But then, we'd all been through it and could sympathize.

He'd be ok. He was coming home with us. Alive. 

I couldn't ask for anything else. 

And I found I wasn't a shell anymore. The churning, roiling mass inside the shell had abated to a more subtle level of anxiety. It was an emotion born of the knowledge that in facing the truth of Daniel's supposed demise, I now had a greater unknown truth still buried within me, trying to get out.

But I couldn't ask for anything else.

Daniel, though, is simply Daniel. He knew something was different. He felt it. Saw it in me, before I'd even understood it myself.

He dropped by with some beer last night. A peace offering, he joked, for "getting lost" on the last mission. He didn't have to say it was for putting me through hell while he was gone. We both knew I had, and we both also knew he wasn't responsible. But in that one sentence, he was taking responsibility. Not for being gone, but for wiggling his way into my life so deeply that his absence caused me pain.

He was giving me an out, my Danny was. He was telling me it was ok to push him away, to get angry and accuse him of not being soldier enough to keep out of trouble. He was accepting the blame for making me love him. And he admitted all this with one flippant opening line, spoken with a sideways glance at my face. Though he knows more words than anyone else in existence, his most profound statements have always been uttered by his eyes.

I cracked open a beer, sitting on the sofa next to Daniel, instead of in the recliner as was my usual wont. I wasn't looking at him when I smirked my response, "Next time, just try to make it easier for us to find you."

And as good as Daniel is at conveying volumes in a few choice words, he's even better at hearing what I don't say.

He heard, "It doesn't matter you're not a soldier. I'm soldier enough for both of us. It doesn't matter you 'got lost', because I will **ALWAYS** find you."

And he grinned, that shy smile of his which seems hesitant for the first few seconds, until he found something in my face that made him realize the grin was more than ok. It's reciprocated.

I don't know how I've managed to move myself from the kitchen to the end of the hallway just outside my bedroom door, but I know why I'm pulled there. The lump under the sheets is sprawled across most of the bed, with only a smattering of tousled tawny brown hair peeking over the edge of the covers. He's buried face first in the deep feather pillow, completely out of it, and yet I know if I were to go disturb him, he'd smile and invite me back to my bed. No, after last night, it's now *our* bed.

After all, how can you possibly lose the other half of your soul?

I meander back to the kitchen, glancing back at the credit card bill on top of the kitchen table:

_Drycleaning Charge for Class A's: $65_  
Replacing Hammond's Car Window: $150  
Catering Service for Irish Wake: $426 

Having Daniel Jackson in My Bed: **Priceless**

I'll pay it, and pay it gladly. For the rest of my life, if I'm lucky.


End file.
